Copyright 2004 National Journal Group, Inc

HEADLINE: DEFENSE: Defense Officials Urge Industry To Move To Next; Internet

BYLINE: William New

BODY: RESTON, Va. -- It is well-known that the United States lags other nations in its transition to the next Internet protocol, IPv.6, and the Defense Department is leading the charge to get U.S. industry on board with the transition.

Charles Lynch, chief of the Defense Department's IPv6 transition office, put a challenge to participants at the IPv.6 Summit here on Thursday. He urged them to develop plans for transition and warned that the current Internet protocol, IPv.4, is filling to the point where "we're on the hairy edge of collapse." The new Internet protocol is vastly larger than the current one. Lynch said the Pentagon is looking at each war-fighter as a network that will require an Internet address. In addition, the department needs enormous Internet space as the world's largest logistics agency, acquirer of materiel, and finance agency, and the world's third- or fourth-largest retailer. The department spends about $30 billion a year on information technology, he said.

Lynch has recommended to the Homeland Security Department that enough addresses be obtained for every locality to put buildings or other sites on the network. He also said the hundreds of millions of dollars now being spent on Internet telephone technology based on IPv.4 "doesn't make sense." Linton Wells, the Defense Department's chief information officer, said the military cannot allow its communications system to "become an Achilles Heel," and IPv.6 will help make Defense systems secure enough to transform the military into an Internet-enabled force.

The department is drafting its plan for fiscal 2006 through 2010 but also has a project to consider what technology will look like 10 years beyond that. Wells said standards for IPv.6 are evolving. The department's deadline for the transition is 2008. Wells outlined the key transformation initiatives for the department's global information grid (GIG). The first is the GIG's bandwidth expansion, which will allow the delivery of very-high-speed fiber-optic connections to operational nodes worldwide. He said it should be fully operational, with more than 90 nodes in place, within a year.

The second initiative is the joint tactical radio system, which uses software to allow mobile communications with Internet protocol to move defense away from traditional, point-to-point, circuit-based radios, he said.

The department also plans to launch a "transformational" satellite in 2012 that extends the bandwidth expansion to orbit using laser communications. Wells said the move will be critical to the military's plan to "darken the skies with global hawks," which are unmanned aerial vehicles.

In addition, the department is developing "net-centric" enterprise services to provide Internet-like availability of the grid to users. And it is trying to build information awareness in the GIG architecture, allowing a near real-time situational awareness for anyone using the grid.

The strategy involves using a "smart pull" approach in which whoever needs information, like a war-fighter on the battlefield, can filter and access just what he needs quickly. That approach will be enabled by putting information on the grid as soon as possible, even as it is created.

LOAD-DATE: December 9, 2004